A grand jury in New Jersey this week indicted one of the former Rutgers University students implicated in the webcam scandal believed to have led to the suicide of gay teen Tyler Clementi.
Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan announced Wednesday morning that a grand jury filed a 15-count indictment against Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, 19, including several bias charges.
Ravi is accused of remotely activating his webcam from the dorm room of student Molly Wei to spy on Clementi having a sexual encounter with another man. The indictment said several students watched the encounter live on Wei’s computer, and two days later, Ravi directed his Twitter followers to a livestream of Clementi and the man again, but that attempt failed.
Shortly after Clementi, 18, learned of the webcam incident, he committed suicide by jumping from the George Washington Bridge.
The grand jury indicted Ravi on two counts of invasion of privacy and two counts of attempted invasion of privacy, charges that could net Ravi up to five years in prison.
The jurors also indicted him on two counts of a second-degree bias crime and two of a third-degree bias crime.
The indictment said that, following Clementi’s suicide, Ravi deleted his Twitter post about the streaming video, sent false tweets to mislead investigators and attempted to convince other students not to testify against him, actions that warranted three counts of tampering with evidence, three counts of hindering his own apprehension and one count of witness tampering.
Ravi and Wei were both arrested in September on invasion-of-privacy charges and were released on bail. Kaplan said the case against Wei is still pending but was not given to the grand jury.
In a statement released through their attorney, Clementi’s parents, Jane and Joe Clementi, welcomed the indictment.
“The grand jury indictment spells out cold and calculated acts against our son Tyler by his former college roommate,” the Clementis said. “We are eager to have the process move forward for justice in this case and to reinforce the standards of acceptable conduct in our society.”
Garden State Equality executive director Steven Goldstein called Wednesday a “day of justice.”
“Mr. Ravi’s grotesque violation of Tyler Clementi’s invasion of privacy, based on Mr. Ravi’s perception of Tyler’s sexual orientation, presents the clearest-cut violation of New Jersey law. You could not ask for a clearer case,” he said. “To those who say that Mr. Ravi’s conduct was merely a prank that students are apt to pull — and that somehow he should not receive a tough sentence — we say that’s nonsense. That heinous philosophy has tragically done so much to create a bullying epidemic in our state and nation in the first place.”
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].